Menu

Interesting…

Now, history clearly shows that many talented women writers have been relegated to what we might generally call “lifestyle” pieces or otherwise “soft” journalism, so I understand the surveyors’ interest in testing this category. However, the distinction between, say, “woman-specific health or culture” and serious politics is not at all apparent. Much of the writing that I (a man) and my colleagues (mostly women) do in DoubleXseems explicitly political to us, but by the metric of “Pink Topics,” we don’t count.

The authors of this report are obviously on the side of women, but I can’t help but feel that the crude distinction among subject matter actually enacts the same kind of stereotyping and pigeon-holing that it seeks to critique. If even women journalists’ advocates are buying into these arbitrary boundaries, how can we expect less enlightened editors to assist with their dissolution?